Preventing Entitlement with Music

Hard work pays off with music!

Music is a beautiful thing. Its is so much more than ‘just music’… it’s also a vessel to personal growth and development. I believe ‘personal growth and development’ is something that becomes more apparent to us in adulthood, but if you think back to childhood, it is a constant journey of personal growth.

Children’s minds are like sponges; eager to learn and absorb. They absorb all the amazing things the world has to offer to help forge who they will become when they grow up. But, let’s be honest here, if we take off the rose-tinted glasses, there are some things in the world that we don’t want our children to absorb. I'm sure we can all agree that one of those things is a sense of entitlement.

‘Sense of entitlement’ and ‘instant gratification’ are definitely a buzz-phrases at the moment. Once they came into my ‘zone’, I started to see it more and more; people simply expecting something without doing anything to ‘earn’ it.

Social media and technology advances both make instant gratification a reality of today’s world. So, how does music help prevent that mindset kicking in with kids when they may be exposed to it more and more?

Learning to play an instrument is an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to overcoming or preventing a sense of entitlement. The main reason being that musical skill simply cannot be handed to you. You have to work hard at it, and your results and rewards will coincide perfectly with the amount of effort put in.

Music teaches perseverance and reward for effort; two incredible characteristics that combat a sense of entitlement.